Chair: Amy S. Wharton
By Michelle L. Robertson, Ph.D.
Washington State University
August 2006
This study examines the effects of institutional processes on the increased presence of
men as head coaches of intercollegiate women’s athletic teams. The social institution of sport is
and has historically been a very male dominated environment. At the time, Title IX was created
as a means to solve the problem of gender inequality for women and one way it did this was by
providing more opportunities for women athletes. Before Title IX was passed, women
dominated the majority of coaching positions in women’s athletics. Ironically, this piece of
legislation also provided more coaching opportunities for men who were willing to cross over
into women’s athletics. Over the next thirty-two years, there was an influx of male coaches into
women's collegiate athletics to where they now occupy a majority of the coaching positions. The
hypotheses tested in this study examined the influence of gendered environments in athletic
departments and athletic conferences. This study also investigated how the prestige of a school’s
membership in a powerhouse conference affected the presence of male coaches on women’s
teams. The results yielded mixed support for institutional theory and the effects of a gendered
environment. However, some of the most interesting results showed a decrease in the odds of a
male coach when a school was in a powerhouse conference. This and other pieces of this study’s
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results raises questions about the effect of prestige on sex composition in coaching. This prestige
factor is measured by type of sport as well as membership in a powerhouse athletic conference.
An important line of future research is how athletic prestige in its various forms affects the sex
composition of coaching.
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